


Identity Theft

by BlueIris4



Series: White Collar Crime [3]
Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-14 23:30:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4584318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueIris4/pseuds/BlueIris4
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean thinks her life was quite complicated enough when she was a middle-aged woman getting a divorce.  But this? This has all the makings of a public relations nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Identity Theft

Jean Innocent has committed two crimes in her life. The first was theft.

Her father told her to stop looking in the toy shop, she couldn’t have anything there anyway. But there was a small glass unicorn in the window that glowed in the sunlight and cast dancing rainbows on the wall, and Jean fell in love with all the fire and passion of her nearly six years. She’d had to have it. And so she’d secreted it away in her pocket when no one was looking, and snuck it out with a sense of triumph.

That unicorn sat on her bedside table for years, first as a badge of honour – the day Jean Innocent took what she wanted – and then increasingly as a reminder of her secret shame. She was a thief. A criminal. A bad girl. Daddy said the police came for thieves in the night and locked them away, and for years afterwards Jean stared at the unicorn and waited for the long arm of the law to find her. When she was eight she decided to become a policewoman, because the law couldn’t take one of their own.

She’s still got that glass unicorn somewhere, hidden away with all her other regrets. Now and then she stumbles across it and feels a flush of old remorse.    

There’s a wash of that same childish fear-guilt-shame the day she confronts Laura Hobson. They don’t see much of each other, Jean having little reason to venture down to the morgue in the course of a normal week, and they’re certainly not friends. So it’s a bit of a surprise to see Laura making her way determinedly towards her through the crowd of officers at the Turf Tavern.

She knows. Jean can see that instantly.

She wonders for a moment how she’s found out – is it all over the station by now? God, the thought is unbearable – before realising that anyone who knows Robbie Lewis as well as Laura Hobson does has probably seen it stamped across his face. For a man who spends his life dealing with matters that require the utmost discretion, Robbie Lewis is one of the worst liars Jean Innocent has ever met. It’s one of the things she likes most about him.

“Dr Hobson,” she says neutrally, while thinking again that it’s been a bloody mistake coming tonight. She never comes to these monthly booze-ups, wouldn’t have come at all if Robbie hadn’t twisted her arm, and if they keep carrying on like this more people than Laura are going to get suspicious.  

“Jean,” Laura murmurs, eying her up like a prize-fighter sizing up an opponent after they've gone one round. It’s a bit speculative, a bit wary, a bit surprised.

Oh yes. She definitely knows.

Jean scrambles around for a topic of conversation and can’t come up with anything except, “Good work on the Abbot case.”

Laura frowns thoughtfully. “That was James, really. I just ran the saliva samples.”

She’d stayed all night in the lab to do it, too, and found the match that enabled Robbie to finally pin it on the bastard, just within the 24 hour custody limit.

“Good work,” Jean repeats forcefully.

Laura shrugs, as inscrutable as James Hathaway on a particularly blank-as-a-brick-wall day. “Yes, well, you too, I suppose.”

Jean doesn’t think she did much, except push through the paperwork, but she’s not about to say that. She’s struggling to think of another neutral remark when Laura says abruptly, “Sorry to hear about you and Andrew,” and Jean’s heart stops very suddenly, then jump-starts to double time.

Why would Laura bring that up? Why here? Why tonight?

And for that matter, why is it that whenever the divorce comes up, everyone insists on apologising? It’s not like someone has died. If anything, Jean thinks irritably, they should be congratulating her for finally clearing some of the dead wood out of her already overcrowded life. She doesn’t want apologies and sympathies and quiet companions in mourning. She wants battle-cries and revenge. A thirst for blood. A rigorously plotted campaign against the cheating bastard.

“Thank you,” she says, in a voice so cold it might as well be _fuck you_.

Laura doesn’t even blink. “I know Robbie’s worried about you,” she continues, still with that inscrutable look, and all Jean’s bitter fantasies about stringing Andrew up by his toes come to a screaming halt.

So this is about Robbie. She should have guessed.

She narrows her eyes, just daring this woman to say anything at all. But Laura Hobson is completely impervious to Jean’s patented Stare of Death.

“Robbie’s always been very kind. He likes to help people. He hates to see anyone in pain.”

Laura gives her a significant look, but Jean’s already understood what she’s really saying.

 _He’s with you for now, while you’re broken,_ that's how it translates. _This isn’t going to last._

Well, it’s not like that’s news. Although she hates this woman, just a little bit, for saying it, even if it’s kindly meant.

“Yes, he’s been very supportive,” Jean trills, and marvels at how her voice can sound cool and calm as a glacier when her whole body wants to shake with angry humiliation. “But then, Robbie’s never shy to step in.”

It’s a palpable hit. Some vicious part of her – the part she runs from but never quite manages to suppress – delights in Laura’s involuntary wince of regret.

But Laura gets the last word.  She gives Jean an apologetic sort of look that makes her want to spit and says, “Yes, well, I just meant – be careful with them. That’s all.”

 _Them_.

Jean knows what she means too well to pretend confusion.

Across Laura’s shoulder, Jean catches Robbie’s eye. He cocks his head in that way she knows means, ‘alright, lass?’ It so obviously doesn’t occur to him that she might need saving from a conversation with Laura Hobson. Bless his innocence. And at his shoulder, curled protectively close, is James Hathaway. He’s watching Jean with that beady blue-green gaze that seems to see more than other people. Jean wonders what he sees when he looks at her.

Jean looks at Laura and looks at James, both of them watching her, both wary if not outright hostile, and she wonders how she’s got herself into this position. She’s never been the kind of woman who goes after someone else’s man. And yet somehow she’s ended up with Robbie Lewis, who so clearly already belonged to two people around the nick. The last thing Jean wanted was to take something that wasn’t hers.

She opens her mouth to say – she has no idea what she’s going to say – and then Laura’s smile broadens into something warm and genuine. Robbie and James are bounding towards them with the gleeful smiles of children who’ve pulled off a prank. There’s something about a bet, and Peterson’s sergeant, and body shots, and Laura giggles and James smirks and even Robbie looks smug.

Jean barely hears one word in ten and Robbie must sense her distraction, because he reaches out and gives her hand the briefest of squeezes. It’s nothing; from Robbie, it’s the height of discretion; but neither Laura nor James miss it, and both of them purse their lips. Jean’s heart thumps loud in a steady beat of regret.

She’s done it again, hasn’t she. Once a thief, always a thief.

* * *

Her only defence is that she hadn’t meant it to happen. Not the first time, nor any of the times after that. It was an accident that became a habit, not that that excuse would stand up in court.

It’s also true that she hadn’t known who or what she was robbing. That’s not a defence, either, not under the eggshell skull rule. You have to take things as you find them, and all that. No doubt she’s strictly liable for all damages, even though she’d had no idea what she was breaking.  

 _Them_ , Laura had said, as if Jean had to have been well aware that Robbie Lewis wasn’t a single unit, but came as part of a package deal. But she hadn’t known that. Still doesn’t, really.

Sure, there have been times over the years when she’s wondered – well, two single men, both clearly devoted to each other, you had to speculate. And if Robbie’s eyes seemed to watch his sergeant with paternal affection, there were times when she wondered if there was something not entirely filial in the way Hathaway was looking back.

But she never entertained any real idea of it, not seriously, not until the other week, when she’d stepped into Hathaway’s hospital room and seen Robbie sitting practically on top of his sergeant, and squeezing his hand so tight it was a wonder machines weren’t beeping and nurses weren’t rushing all over the place yelling at him to stop cutting off the man’s blood supply. It was only then that she’d realised she might have inadvertently stepped into something more complicated than she could ever have imagined.  

She’d left the hospital feeling a bit shaken and a bit regretful, certain that there’d have to be conversations and apologies – explanations, definitely, and quite possibly a parting of the ways – but no. Hathaway had come out of hospital, and taken his three days recovery, and then things had gone on much as before.

She wonders sometimes where Robbie is on the nights he’s not with her. If he’s with Hathaway. They’ve never discussed it. She’s never asked for clarification of the exact parameters of their relationship – hers and Robbie’s, or his and James’s – and as the days go on, it seems harder and harder to broach the subject.

But now she wonders if she’s stolen something that belonged to Laura Hobson, or – and this is more troubling – if Laura was too wise to take something that wasn’t meant for either of them.

* * *

The Abbot case has wound up, Robbie and James have written their reports, and Jean has forwarded the evidence to the prosecution. They think they’re done.

Then the defendant hangs himself. Someone forgot to take his belt when booking him into custody.

Jean shouldn’t be shaken. She’s been in the job too long, she’s seen too much, and honestly if a serial killer chooses to hang himself rather than spend the rest of his life being paid for by the state in the questionable comfort of a maximum security prison, who is CS Jean Innocent to complain.

But she _is_ shaken. They caught the right man, she’s sure of it, but he hadn’t been proven guilty yet – and even if he had, there’s something awful about that broken desperate man she’d met all too briefly hanging dead from the ceiling.

Hooper had to cut him down. She’ll have to pay for counselling, and they’re already over budget.

She calls Robbie and doesn’t bother with a greeting. She says, “Can you come over?” without explaining why or feeling she needs to. She suspects he could do with a warm body and a bit of comfort tonight as much as her. So she’s taken aback when he hesitates, says, “Actually, I, uh, I can’t tonight.”

 _Can’t tonight_. Andrew’s favourite phrase.

She doesn’t ask. She’s not sure she has the right to. They’re not at the stage of requiring explanations. They probably won’t ever be. Because this isn’t – well, Jean doesn’t even know what it _is_ , let alone what it isn’t.

He explains anyway.

“James is here,” he says awkwardly. “He’s, uh, he’s not himself.”

She realises then that’s he whispering. There’s a crackling sound down the line as if he’s taken the cordless phone far away from its source.

“Robbie, where are you?”

There’s a pause, then, “In the garden,” he confesses. “I’ve finally got him to sleep.”

Like he’s a child. Or possibly a lover. James Hathaway is asleep in Robbie’s flat and now Robbie’s hiding outside, whispering to his mistress, even though James no doubt understands far better what’s going on between her and Robbie than she does.

Jean shouldn’t laugh, but she can’t help it. It seems to break the tension when Robbie gives a rueful chuckle of his own.

“Look, why don’t you come here?” he suggests. She shouldn’t. It’s a terrible idea. What she and Robbie are doing is sixteen kinds of inappropriate, and whatever it is Robbie is up to with his sergeant – well, it’s better if she can officially not know. And possibly personally not know as well.

But she thinks of Abbot swinging from his belt, her laughter stills, and she swallows and says, “Yes. I think I will. Thanks.”

She doesn’t know what to expect when she pulls up at Robbie’s flat. She’s never been here before, and while she’s working on the assumption that there’s a second bedroom that unofficially belongs to James (or possibly officially belongs to James; she should pull up their personnel files), she doesn’t discount the tiny chance that Robbie means he’d finally gotten James to sleep _in Robbie’s bed_.

Both her assumptions are wrong. Robbie opens the door, presses the lightest of butterfly kisses to her forehead, and puts his finger to his lips. She steps inside and sees James Hathaway asleep on the couch. Curled up in foetal position, swamped by blankets, Hathaway looks impossibly young and vulnerable. She understands instantly why Robbie couldn’t turn the lad away. More than that, she understands why Robbie didn’t want to. Hathaway may be a great hulking mass of impertinence during waking hours, but there’s something innocent and rather sweet about him in repose.

Robbie pours her a glass of wine and they stand in the kitchen, murmuring in undertones together, silent more often than they talk. At one point he folds her into his embrace, and she stands leaning back against his chest, his solid arms warm around her middle. Together they drink white wine and watch James Hathaway sleep.

Several thoughts coalesce for her in that moment. The knowledge that despite everything, she is happy here, in this moment, with Robbie. The acceptance that James Hathaway is a part of that. And the realisation that whatever is going on between her and Robbie – and she doesn’t know, probably won’t ever know, she’s never liked labels – but whatever is going on, it isn’t just between her and Robbie. There’s three of them in this. Whatever the fuck it is.

She doesn’t know how she feels about that; she does know she doesn’t want to think about it tonight. So instead of worrying it through, she turns in Robbie’s embrace, puts down her wine, and kisses him slow and languorous. She can feel his arms tightening around her – good, she’s not the only one who can’t bear to be left alone with her thoughts – and then he’s pulling back, taking her hand, leading her to the bedroom.

She follows all too willingly. But as they go, she glances down at the couch, and finds herself staring straight into James Hathaway’s unblinking blue-green eyes. There’s nothing hostile in that gaze, nothing vicious. But there’s undeniable wariness.

She walks on, his eyes fall close, and then she’s in Robbie’s arms, he’s unbuttoning her blouse, caressing her breasts, her head is falling backwards in the anticipation of pleasure, and she throttles a low moan, all too aware of their not-quite-asleep subordinate in the next room.

It should be strange, the two of them in here while James is out there. But instead what’s strange is how very not-strange it is.

* * *

Afterwards there’s pillow talk about Abbot and responsibility and guilt. Even though she knows rationally that it isn’t her fault, it takes his steady gaze and gentle hands to make her feel absolved.

And then there’s silence, while Jean wonders about the man in the next room, and she suspects Robbie’s thoughts aren’t too far distant.  

“Have you and James ever…” she says and trails off, realising too late that there’s no good way she can finish that sentence. She can’t ask – she’s still their boss, for Christ’s sake – and anyway, life has taught her that nothing good can come of lying in bed with a man and asking about his other lovers. Besides, she suspects Robbie wouldn’t have an answer for her. It’s clear it’s far from simple.

“I dunno, lass,” Robbie says helplessly, and she realises he hasn’t quite understood. She’s asking about facts – lips on lips, bodies on bodies – and Robbie’s talking about feelings. That’s a whole other minefield, and one Jean doesn’t pretend to be able to navigate.

“Does he do this a lot?”

“Now and then,” Robbie says evasively, and reaches up to rub the back of his neck. It’s one of his trademark tells, a clear sign that he’s uncomfortable. Amusing enough on an investigation, but downright irritating when you’re lying in bed and looking for straightforward answers where none exist. “More when something like this happens,” Robbie mutters. “He takes too much on himself. Blames himself for things that aren’t his fault.”

 _Like you_ , goes unspoken. Jean wonders if Robbie knows he’s attracted to broken things.

“He needs someone to talk him out of his head.”

“And is there anyone else?” she asks. “A woman? A – a man?”

There’s a long silence.

“Not as I know,” Robbie mumbles finally. It’s as close as he’ll come to a declaration, she realises. Robbie Lewis is never going to say, _I’m the one for James Hathaway_. He’ll never give James away like that, even if his detective brain must have worked that one out years ago. Jean wonders how she ever missed it before, and if as their boss she has to do something now that she knows. But then, can she really report what she’s found out in bed with one of her own subordinates? And what has she found out, anyway? That one of her officers kips on his governor’s couch? It’s hardly a disciplinary offence.

Jean thinks again that this was all complicated enough when she was a middle-aged woman getting a divorce. But this? This has all the makings of a public relations nightmare.

“He’ll be here a lot, then?” she says quietly.

He reaches down, squeezes her hand, wills her to understand. “I can’t toss him out,” he says. Pauses. “I won’t. He’s – look, I need him too.”

Jeans doesn’t know quite what to make of that. She understands a fair bit now about needing people – more than she used to, anyway – but, “I’ll have to think about that.”

He squeezes her hand again and presses a soft kiss to her temple. “Yeah, ’course you will,” he agrees immediately. The relief in his voice is unmistakeable. That’s something, Jean thinks. It’s good to know that he definitely wants her to stay.

They lie side by side in the dark for a long time before either of them fall asleep.

* * *

She doesn’t know what she expects the morning after, but it isn’t waking to the smell of frying bacon and roasting coffee. The bed beside her is empty, but warm, and before her eyes have quite fluttered open there’s a whiskery kiss being pressed to her cheek.

“Going for a shower,” Robbie says in a voice gruff with sleep. “Coffee in the kitchen.”

She isn’t thinking straight – can’t be – her caffeine addiction must have addled her brain – because that’s the only explanation for why she tugs Robbie’s moth-eaten woollen robe around her naked body and stumbles into the kitchen seeking the source of that delicious smell and not giving a moment’s thought to who else might be in there.

She pulls up short at the sight of James Hathaway slouched over the cooker. He’s in low-riding track-pants and a tight-fitting t-shirt (he must keep a change of clothes here, she realises suddenly, and bookmarks that as something to worry over later), and he’s tossing a pan of bacon looking quite at home.

Which of course he is. He probably cooks here a few mornings a week. It’s Jean who’s the interloper.

James looks up from the pan, and gives her a cool once-over with his eyes. She must look a fright. She wishes suddenly she’d taken a moment to brush her hair.

“Good morning, Ma’am.” He doesn’t smile. “Coffee’s on the table.”

It’s set for three, Jean realises suddenly, and wonders when she fell down the rabbit hole.

“Thank you.” She pours herself a cup from the cafetière – very black, very strong, very rich, must be a Hathaway brew – and makes a dignified retreat to the bedroom. Then she sits down on the bed and very quietly goes to pieces.

This is not what she signed up for.

She feels like an outsider looking in on her own life. Someone else is playing the role of Jean, someone she doesn’t recognise at all.

Maybe this is how mid-life crises begin. But if so, shouldn’t there have been a memo on her fiftieth?

Minutes (hours? days? years?) later, the door opens and Robbie returns, hair wet and curling around his collar. He smiles at her, then does a double-take, and suddenly he’s kneeling down beside her. He’s wet and warm and solid and _there_. She’s never been more grateful to see him.

“Alright, lass?”

“James is making us breakfast,” she tells him, and marvels at how steady her voice is.

“That’s right,” Robbie agrees. He cocks his head, then says, “You’re having a panic attack.”

This is irrelevant, she thinks. The point is that James Hathaway is out there making them breakfast, and Jean is cowering in here completely and utterly _naked_ and this is weird and it’s wrong and it’s so many levels of inappropriate Jean doesn’t think it’s even quantifiable and – _oh._

Yes, this could be a panic attack. She’s had one once before. Twenty-five years ago now, right back when she'd first moved to Belfast, but she remembers the feeling well enough. Like a long thin needle is stabbing into her left ventricle while an iron band constricts her lungs.

“How do you know?”

He shrugs. “James gets them sometimes. Deep breaths now.”

He talks her through it. His voice is low and steady, his hand is comforting on her knee, and eventually the panic subsides and she’s left feeling a bit nauseous, but basically herself. She reaches for her coffee and gulps it down in long desperate swallows.

“Probably should cut down on the caffeine,” Robbie observes evenly.

Yes, probably, she thinks, and drains the cup. Self-destruction is firmly ingrained by now, and why start trying to shake the habits of a lifetime?

“Feel up to some breakfast?”

And somehow – Jean doesn’t know how – she finds herself in yesterday’s skirt and blouse sitting down to bacon and eggs with Robbie Lewis and James Hathaway. She’s not surprised to discover that Hathaway is an excellent cook.

They don’t say much. Hathaway divides the papers neatly, keeping _Arts and Leisure_ for himself, passing _Sports_ to Robbie. He looks at Jean doubtfully, then hands over _World News_. There’s the sound of chewing, the rustle of papers, then Hathaway observes that the Welsh National Opera are touring to Oxford and Robbie’s eyes light up and he says something about Monteverdi. Jean hadn’t known he was an opera fan. They fall silent again. Jean reads the headlines and risks a comment about the state of the economy.

“Desperate times, Ma’am,” James agrees gravely. She wonders if he’s taking the piss. Impossible to tell, with Hathaway. But she looks at Robbie, and Robbie isn’t smirking in that way he does when James has made a smart comment and Robbie’s the only one clued in enough to get the joke. Actually, he looks shyly pleased with them both. So Jean bites her lip, looks at James and says as artlessly as she can, “You might call me Jean. Outside the station.”

He purses his lips, looking like he’s sucking lemons, but agrees, “Alright. Jean.”

Her name sounds strange on his lips, but Robbie is grinning at them both. As if this is progress. Lord knows what he thinks they’re progressing towards.

Robbie complains about the FIFA corruption scandal and, in spite of herself, she looks at James. He looks back, arches an eyebrow, and she thinks for a moment that he’s just as bewildered. Maybe she’s finally found an ally in her one-woman crusade against discussing sports at breakfast. She’d tried to put an embargo on it in her own house, for all the good that had done when Chris and Andrew were both at home and the football was on.

But then James says, “Well, sports organisations shouldn’t be above the law.”

And Robbie agrees, and they’re talking about precedents, and world cups, and institutional opacity, and the names of players and clubs Jean has never even heard of.

James belongs here, she thinks. She’s just passing through.

* * *

Jean knows it’s complicated, this relationship between DS and DI. She’s been there herself, hasn’t she. Over twenty-five years ago, when she’d been a young DC just starting out, before Andrew, before Chris, even before Oxford, there’d been DI Fields, with his warm smile and his warmer hands.

And his wife.

The wife he’d never mentioned, the ring he never wore, and the secret that everyone had known and no one had told. Everyone had watched her fall deeper and deeper and no one had said a word.

To this day Jean still feels a flush of humiliated, impotent anger when she remembers the day she found out. She’d left Coventry soon after, transferred to Belfast, from there to Cardiff, from there to Oxford. Running – always running – from the memory of the time she’d stolen without knowing it.

She’s done it again, she thinks now. She’s taken something that was never meant to be hers.

When she knocks up against James Hathaway in the corridor, and his blue-green eyes meet hers with a blank impassivity she envies intensely, she almost says, _I don’t want to get in the way_. But she stops herself. Because she is in the way, that’s evident, and selfish as it may be, she has no intention of getting out of it.

“I can’t give him what you give him,” she says instead. James looks at her, and a moment of grim understanding passes between them.

“No,” he says, and she hears, _I can’t give him what you give him, either_. But it’s clear James doesn’t think what she gives Robbie is worth much. It probably isn’t. It can’t last.

* * *

The thing is, now she’s looking at it from the other side, she has a bit more sympathy for DI Fields. Not a lot, but a bit. It’s complicated, and getting more so by the day, and the longer it goes on the harder it is to know when or how or to whom they should be declaring this ever-increasing web of conflicts of interest. Her and Robbie is bad enough, but her and Robbie, and Robbie and James – a chain of CS to DI to DS – is something else altogether. She has no idea what the Chief Constable would think of it, but she’s certain there would be no glowing endorsement.

What she ought to do, of course, is assign James to another DI. She thinks about it very seriously, more than once, but she can never quite bring herself to do it. She’d feel too much a hypocrite to insist on separating them when she can’t do a damn thing about the fact that she’s Robbie’s superior. She can hardly assign Robbie to another CS. It might have been a good thing if he’d retired after all, but then they wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.

Of course it’s only a matter of time before it comes to an end. Or before people start to find out, and it _has_ to come to an end, definitely messily, and quite possibly publicly. There’s no good outcome here, she thinks grimly. It’s a lose-lose situation. Jean has never been drawn to those.

But she’s also never been one to accept the lack of apparent solutions at face value. She’s a problem-solver. Always has been. They can work this out.

She has no idea how.

* * *

And while part of her brain is working on the problem, the rest of it is taken up with numbers. The phone number of the divorce lawyer. The bottom line of the settlement the accountant has drawn up and Jean is still refusing to sign. The number of mortgage repayments for which she and Andrew are still liable.

Not to mention the number of officers on active duty, the amount they’ve eaten into the monthly budget, the number of trainees they’re expected to take on in the new year (too high) and the proposed budget to cover them (too low).

The number of times she and Chris have spoken since the divorce (one). The number of messages she’s left since (seventeen, at last count). The number of times she’s picked up the phone to call him and lost her nerve (uncountable).

It’s a still life by numbers. Someone should draw her portrait.

* * *

And so they go on. Robbie spends some nights at Jean’s, Jean spends some nights at Robbie’s, and sometimes Sergeant Hathaway is on the couch and sometimes he isn’t. Sometimes he’s there when they go to bed and gone when they wake; other days they go to sleep in an empty flat and wake to the smell of freshly ground coffee and the sound of someone humming cheerily around the kitchen.

James has a spare key, she learns, and he comes and goes as he pleases.

“He’s like a stray cat,” Jean muses in bed late one night. “He’s your pet stray.”

Robbie stares at her for a moment. He looks a bit spooked by the comparison, although Jean can’t think why. He rubs the back of his neck, and chuckles ruefully.

“I’ve always been one for taking in waifs and strays.”

It’s another thing she likes about him. The list is getting longer by the day.

* * *

She’s startled to turn the page in her diary and realise it’s been two months since Andrew moved out. She flips through the pages and marvels at how full her days have been, and how fast the time has gone. Her days may have been filled with lawyers and accountants, both in and out of the nick, but still it’s better than sitting at home and staring at all the empty rooms. And there have been other things too, of course. Work and friends. Robbie. All things considered, the time has been less empty than she’d expected.

Perhaps that's why seeing the date now comes as such a shock.  September has slammed into her with the force of a steam train, and this weekend there's that bloody concert at the Sheldonian.  It's a fundraiser for the new Save the Children initiative being launched at Oxford Brookes. An initiative Andrew helped to organise. And with which Thames Valley Police is partnered.  

Her secretary has left two tickets in her inbox. She wonders for a moment if this is the kind of job she can delegate to one of her officers. But the Chief Constable would have something to say about the CS missing a major initiative by a community partner. And even if he wouldn’t, there’ll be enough people there who know about the divorce. No doubt there are gossips all over Oxford wondering if she has the balls to show. She can’t not go.

Except Andrew will be there. Probably with his blonde bauble on his arm.

She can’t go.

There’s one obvious solution, of course. It’s not ideal, but that night she says to Robbie, “How do you feel about Handel?”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “I quite like the oratorios,” he says cheerfully. “Why? You’re not telling me _you’re_ a fan?”

The scepticism is not flattering. Admittedly, Jean is not one for music in the normal way of things. She likes theatre (if it’s not too experimental), and musicals (if they’re cheerful), but she only owns two CDs – the Charlotte Church Christmas Collection (a gift from Chris fifteen years ago or more) and the Bee Gees reunion album – and she hates them both.

But she enjoys chamber music. Always has. She enjoys the occasion as much as the music itself – everyone getting dressed up, everyone listening together, feeling part of a community of music-lovers. When she retires she’s finally going to start learning the piano that’s been sitting in their front room for nearly a decade.

So, “Yes, actually,” she says with a smug smile, and he raises his hands in mock surrender. “I’ve got two tickets to the Oxford Symphonic on Saturday. Don’t suppose you’d like to come?”

She holds her breath. She doesn’t know why she’s so nervous about this. She’s co-opted him into attending enough of these events in the past, long before they were even…well, whatever they are. But it feels different now. Now that she’s not ordering him as his superior officer, but inviting him as his…well, as his _lover_ , she supposes, and winces a bit at how tawdry and old-fashioned that sounds.

“I’d love to,” Robbie says, and his eyes have gone soft and wistful. He really would, that’s evident. She lets out a little breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “But Lyn’s coming into town,” he continues, and she’s startled by the intensity of her disappointment. “She’s got a friend’s wedding in the day. Said I’d have dinner with her and Tim before they drive back.”

“Oh,” she says, and wishes her voice didn’t give her away. Surely she’s used to being refused by now. She certainly got enough practice in her marriage. She shouldn’t care as much as she does. “Yes, of course.”

“I’d really love to, though,” he says, and she wishes he’d stop. Yes, she gets the point. It doesn’t much soften the blow. She’ll get over it in a minute or two, anyway. Because it’s stupid, and it doesn’t matter. It’s only a concert, and Jean isn’t the kind of woman who has to have a man on her arm every night.

James stops by for a drink later on, and between conversations about the latest case (a series of particularly grisly strangulations) and the new online training program for junior officers (in which James, quite unexpectedly, comes in on Jean’s side against Robbie Badge-Carrying-Luddite Lewis), Jean has quite forgotten about the weekend when Robbie says à propos of nothing, “Look here, how about you take James to this concert?”

Silence.

“Uh,” she says, and stops. Robbie’s looking so pleased with himself for the suggestion that she can’t bear to burst his bubble. Even if she thinks this is quite possibly the worst idea since Braddock’s march. “Um, yes, I suppose so.”

She looks at James. He looks just as conflicted as she feels. But Robbie is beaming at them both, and she has no choice but to smile weakly and say, “Do you like Handel?”

* * *

The thing is, Jean isn’t sure she even _likes_ James Hathaway.

He’s a good officer, and if he wasn’t so damn resistant towards promotion or career development or taking on extra responsibilities within the force, she’d consider him an ideal example of the strengths of the Fast Track scheme. He still is that, really. He and Robbie have a clearance rate competitive with any in the force.

But it’s one thing to recognise that she’s got a bloody good officer on her hands, and another to have any clue how to handle him outside the nick. There’s something impenetrable about Hathaway. Always has been. Though Lord knows he was a damn sight easier to manage in the early days, before Robbie came back, and he's become a damn sight harder since she and Robbie started up their – well, since they started up. 

She rather resents Robbie for trying to force the issue now.  He can't just snap his fingers and make them get along because it would make things easier for him if they did - she and Hathaway are a square peg and a round hole and it just isn't going to _fit_ \- they're never all three going to piece together like some sort of lopsided jigsaw and it's a waste of time even to try.

But they _are_ trying, in their own little ways, and oddly enough she likes Hathaway a bit more now that he so clearly likes her less. There’s something very sweet about his protective instincts towards Robbie and, irritating as it may be to find herself constantly sparring with a sergeant, she likes that Robbie has someone solid at his back.  It's hard not to warm to someone Robbie so obviously thinks the world of. 

That doesn't mean she has any clue what to say to him when they're not talking about violent crime.  

And so it happens that on Saturday night (after spending a bit longer on her face than she would normally, and getting her hair done, and actually buying a new goddamn dress), she answers the door to a suited James Hathaway and she doesn't know what to say and neither does he and they stand there on the doorstep just blinking at each other.

He looks good, she can’t help but notice. He looks comfortable in a dinner suit in a way Robbie never does.  He's also looking at her looking at him and shifting his weight awkwardly from foot to foot. More comfortable in a suit, maybe, but definitely less comfortable with her.

“You look lovely, Ma’am,” he says finally, and then actually _bows_ like bloody Little Lord Fauntleroy. 

She frowns, and reminds him, “Jean,” and thinks Robbie has a lot to answer for.

James looks doubtful, but at least he doesn’t argue with her.

Pleasantries over, the drive to the Sheldonian is a fraught affair. She does her best to fill the car with mindless chatter, and James valiantly picks up every conversational ball she lobs in his direction, but try as they might they get nowhere. Even a question about Robbie’s daughter only fills about a minute. And then they’re both left sitting in silence, desperately trying to come up with something to say to each other.

She’s going to kill Robbie for this, she thinks. If James doesn’t get there first.

It gets easier when they arrive, of course. There’s a good representation of Oxford philanthropists and academics, all of whom she knows well, and of course there’s the team spear-heading the new initiative. She’s been working with them off and on for months, and it’s a pleasure now to see those hours of planning start to come to fruition. James is the perfect companion for these conversations – interested and interesting, without ever crossing the line into impertinence. She’s constantly braced for him to make a smart remark, but he doesn’t. He’s the model date.

A bit too perfect, actually. It makes her suspicious.

When they take their seats, she pinches his forearm and whispers, “What are you up to?”

He smirks at her, says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” with a kind of smug satisfaction that tells her he knows exactly what she’s getting at.

Oddly, that relieves her a bit. At least when Hathaway’s being impertinent she knows where she stands. She supposes Robbie’s given him a talking-to about being on his best behaviour.  And she's still going to rake him over the coals for forcing them both into this - the only question is whether to exact her revenge in the form of hours on-call or with something more _personal_ \- but she relaxes a bit, all the same.  It's good to know someone's monitoring Hathaway-the-Unpredictable, even from a distance, because lord knows she wouldn't have a clue what to look out for.

So her guard is down when it finally happens. It’s interval, they’ve just collected their drinks, and they’re managing to stumble through a fairly intelligent conversation about the music (unsurprisingly, James is well-versed in Handel’s entire canon), when Jean turns around and finds herself staring straight at her almost-ex-husband.

He’s got a simpering blonde on his arm.

“Jean!” he says, loudly enough to draw the attention of everyone around them. Half the crowd titter nervously, the other half stare in unabashed curiosity. Friends and strangers alike are drawn to blood in the water.

“Andrew,” she murmurs, and steels herself to give him the briefest of air kisses. Her lips don’t come anywhere near his skin. “What a lovely evening. Congratulations.”

“It’s for a worthy cause,” he says evenly. “Congratulations to you as well. It’ll be a credit to the police.”

They don’t quite look at each other. She focuses on the mole by his left eye – the one that’s always irritated her – and he’s quite definitely fixated on her earrings.

“Isn’t the music just divine?” the blonde coos, clutching at Andrew’s arm in a quite unconvincing performance of rapture. “And of course it’s such a wonderful thing for the children! I’m so proud of Andy.”

 _Andy_. Jean’s eyes narrow.

“Yes,” she says, in a voice so cold Andrew actually winces. “Yes, quite.”

But of course he’s got a way of getting his own back. And he does, saying, “This is Cheryl,” as he squeezes the girl’s waist affectionately.

Another woman would throw her drink in his face. For just a moment, Jean wishes she was that woman with an intensity like nothing she’s ever experienced. For that one moment of satisfaction, she would trade a lifetime of lesser pleasures.

But she’s not here as Jean Innocent, wronged wife. She’s here as Superintendent Innocent, representative of the Thames Valley Police. So she puts on her best smile – cold enough to give a penguin frostbite – and says, “Charmed, I’m sure,” in a tone so astringent it could strip paint.

The girl cowers. That’s something.

Jean lets herself look, just for a moment. There’s a curious masochistic pleasure in finally meeting the chit’s wide blue eyes straight on. So _this_ is the woman who replaced her. She’s a beautiful girl – tall, tanned, and blonde – and even Jean can’t say it isn’t an upgrade. Although of course a bright young thing like this would look better on the arm of someone like James Hathaway than tucked around Andrew’s wrinkled old elbow.

“And who’s this?” Andrew says with that mock-geniality he does so well. “Co-opting your officers for the evening again, are you?”

It’s almost too much. Her fingers twitch with the urge to throw her drink not on him but actually at him – glass and all – and she opens her mouth to say something quite unforgivable, when a large, warm hand curls around her waist and gently, ostentatiously, strokes across her hip.

“Not this evening, no,” James murmurs, in a voice like silk dripping honey. He leans closer, until all of his long warm side is pressed up against her body, and sticks out his right hand as he says, “James Hathaway. Pleased to meet you.”

Andrew’s flummoxed expression is ten times better than a drink in his face.

“Come along, Jean,” James says, when he’s satisfied he’s made his point. “I think they’re getting ready to start again.”

She lets him lead her away without a backward glance. He doesn’t let go of her until they’re back in their seats, and even then he remains hunched protectively towards her. It can’t be comfortable for him to be pressed so close, with his long legs jammed out the other way into the tiny aisle, and she squeezes his forearm and whispers, “Thank you.”

He looks at her dead-on. “What a tosser,” he says dismissively. “He definitely traded down.”

It’s a lie, of course. But it’s a lie so affectionate, a lie he so obviously believes, that it brings unexpected wetness to her eyes. She’s grateful when the house lights dim and she’s got the veneer of darkness to bring herself under control. It gets harder when his hand finds hers and squeezes it tight, but she doesn’t let go. She can’t.

For the first time since she signed the papers, she allows herself to think that maybe she hasn’t lost so much by the divorce. Maybe she’s even gained something instead.

* * *

By silent mutual consent they drive back to Robbie’s.

“Don’t you two scrub up nice!” he admires as soon as he opens the door. It’s not much as compliments go, but the frankly admiring sweep of his gaze is a soothing balm for her wounded pride. She’s never had cause to doubt that Robbie finds her attractive, even with all her saggy bits – the stretch marks, the cellulite, the grey hairs, all the war wounds of middle age – but meeting perfect Cheryl with her perfect legs has unsettled her. More than it should, no doubt. Of course the girl is probably as dumb as a box of hair. Well, hopefully.

“How was dinner?” Jean says when they’re settled on the couch and she’s kicked her heels off to massage the feeling back into her toes.

Robbie’s smile lights up his face like a thousand watt bulb, and that’s a better answer than any words. “Lyn’s pregnant,” he announces. “It’s a girl this time.”

He sounds thrilled, too. They offer their congratulations, and clink their mugs of tea as if they’re something more festive. Jean doesn’t think about the fact that she’s sleeping with a man who’ll soon be a grandfather twice over, because if she starts to think like that she’ll feel a lot older than middle-aged. And she resolutely doesn’t think about her own son, who hasn’t called in weeks. She hopes one day she’ll be as much a part of her own grandchildren’s lives as Robbie is a part of his, but she rather doubts it.

“But how was the concert?” he says. “Did they play the Water Music Suite?”

Jean and James exchange wry smiles and James actually rolls his eyes affectionately. Of course Robbie’s first question is about the music. According to James, Robbie’s particular love for the Baroque composers can be blamed squarely on Morse.

“It was a bit more exciting outside the theatre than in,” James tells him, very dryly. “We met the infamous Cheryl.”

Robbie’s eyes widen; he looks at Jean and she tries to look back impassively and pretend the whole incident doesn’t bother her at all. He sees straight through her, of course.  

“He didn’t,” Robbie states. “That _bastard_.”

Andrew. Robbie’s taken dead against him, in a way that quite warms Jean’s heart. Even though it would doubtless be a disaster of epic proportions, some days she fantasises about introducing the two of them. _That_ would be a show.

“Jean was very dignified,” James tells him now. “Cool as anything.”

Robbie gives her an admiring look.

“James was _not_ so subtle,” Jean says, and she and James grin at each other, and Robbie looks pleased and says, “Good man,” in decided tones.

And then they’re all smiling at each other, and it’s impossible to restrain an irrepressibly naughty giggle.

It’s the most enjoyable evening Jean can remember in years.

* * *

She’s coated in a light sheen of sweat from head to toe and her whole body is warm and pleasantly relaxed.   She arches her back, stretching out every vertebrae and it feels so good it’s a moment before she becomes aware of Robbie’s eyes on her, watching every move.

“What?” she asks, nonplussed.

He smiles at her. “Nothing, nothing,” he murmurs. “I just like watching you. Go on.”

There’s a kind of secret smile around his lips that tells her that’s not entirely it. Bemused, she stretches the other way, curling her spine into a gentle rise.

This time he actually chuckles.

She looks up, demands irritably, “What?” Then, “You can’t want another go already?”

Not that she’d mind. God, it’s been years since she’s had such an active sex life, and she’s relishing every moment. It’s true what they say, too – it _is_ good for the skin.

The look he gives her is so fond, so frankly affectionate, it damn near takes her breath away.

“Nothing. It’s just – you’re like a cat when you do that, d’you know that?”

She narrows her eyes, not entirely sure that’s a compliment.

“Don’t tell me I’m another of your strays,” she warns him, thinking that she’s not sure how much she wants to be lumped in with Monty and James.

But he laughs, says, “Other way round, love.”

 _Love._ That’s new.

Jean thinks she rather likes it.

* * *

She doesn’t spend much time in her own home anymore, what with early mornings at the nick and late nights at Robbie’s. So when the phone rings, echoing shockingly loud through the house, she’s startled. No one calls the home phone anymore. She leaps up, almost says “Robbie,” but manages “Hello,” instead in a tone so fond it may as well be his name.

“Hi, Mum.”

Every part of her freezes, and it takes him saying, “Mum? Mum? Are you there?” to kick her into gear.

“Chris,” she murmurs, reverently as a prayer.

It’s the first time he’s called in weeks. The second time they’ve spoken since that terrible conversation when she’d told him his Dad was moving out, and he’d said absolutely nothing, and the silence had echoed with all the accusations he would never make out loud. He thinks she didn’t try hard enough, was never home enough, didn’t make family a priority the way she should have. At the time she’d thought he was right, although lately Robbie finds ways of reminding her that there’s two people in a relationship.

Sometimes more, she thinks wryly.

“How…how are you?” he says hesitantly.

Falling apart. Never been better. Alone. Crowded. Confused.

“Working hard,” she says finally. That’s the only thing that is definitely not a lie.

He tuts, as if he both isn’t surprised, and doesn’t approve. A quite predictable reaction. Her son won’t ever make Superintendent – he might not even make Detective Inspector – but he probably also won’t go through a bitter divorce, or exchange pleasantries on the phone with his children less than once a week only to hear them say little and confide even less. Jean doesn’t regret her choices, but she can’t begrudge him his either.

“I suppose you’re back on the microwave meals,” he says, sounding both amused and disappointed. It’s too much – too much to be judged by her own son right now – and she almost snaps back with something sharp. But he’s her son, and he’s hurting too, and this relationship is fraught enough without adding an argument about nutrition into the mix.

“I’m taking a vitamin supplement,” she tells him dryly. Then, tentatively, “Perhaps this is the year you’ll teach me to cook.” He’s been promising every Christmas for the last three years, but they’ve never found the time. She doubts they will this year, either. Still, the tension seems to release somehow when he says, “Yes. I’d like that.”

Jean wonders again how she’s managed to surround herself with men who say everything in the space in between words. James Hathaway’s the worst, but even Robbie could give lessons. And Chris is –

“Dad wants me to meet Cheryl.”

Well actually Chris can be fairly straight-talking when he needs to be. That and a general interest in police procedure are about the only two things she can see he’s inherited from her.

“Oh.” She swallows and throws up her chin, although there’s no one to see that small gesture of wounded pride. “Oh, I see.”

“I, uh…I wondered if that would be okay with you.”

No, of course not. No, never. No, no, _no_.

“Whatever you want, darling.”

That's one of the things they never tell you about becoming a mother. As soon as you hold that little ball of squashed pink skin and fuzz for the first time, you turn into bloody Pinocchio.

But, “it’s not what I _want_ ,” he says crossly. “ _Honestly_.”

“Oh,” she says again. She doesn’t know how to take that. Increasingly she feels like everyone around her is having conversations she’s not privy to and wouldn’t understand if she was.

“I just meant – well, I’m not sure I will, but I definitely won’t if it’s going to hurt you. That’s what I meant.”

It’s so tempting to ask him not to. But this isn’t about her now, she reminds herself for the twenty thousandth time. This has moved so far beyond her she can’t even find herself in this mess of hurt feelings and recriminations. Now all there is is holding onto the veneer of family harmony. This is about Chris.

She doesn’t know how she manages it, but she says something about respecting his choices, and how she doesn’t resent his father, and how they can all work together on this. She even gives a little speech about love and forgiveness and family. At least years of diplomatically smoothing over Robbie Lewis’s many indiscretions have taught her a thing or two about lying through her teeth.

But when she’s finished, her son says, “I worry about you,” in a tone so sweet, so gentle, that she knows he hasn’t been taken in for a second. It breaks her heart far more effectively than anything Andrew could ever have said or done. “I don’t want you to be lonely,” he continues.

She looks around at the big, empty living room, with all the gaps where Andrew has taken pictures or bits of furniture. All the photo frames she’s turned down because she can’t bear to look at images of the times they were happy, nor can she bear to throw them away. It’s half a room, representing half a life, a life filled with holes.

But she looks down, and clenched tight in her hand is Robbie’s handkerchief.  

“I’m not lonely,” she says.           

And she’s surprised to realise that that isn’t a lie at all. She almost – for just a moment – wonders if maybe it can last.

* * *

It’s around then that things start to go wrong.

It begins when James takes a lover. For a few weeks, he doesn’t spend a single night at Robbie’s, and they make do with cornflakes and instant coffee in the mornings. They don’t miss him exactly – how can they miss him when they still see him every day? – but both Jean and Robbie breathe a quiet sigh of relief when he’s back.

“I feel like it sometimes,” he says, and Jean doesn’t miss the way his eyes dart, ever so hesitantly, to Robbie. “Not, uh, not all that often.”

Robbie nods as if this makes a certain kind of sense to him. Jean wonders what kind of agreement they have, and what part she plays in it. She worries again that maybe she’s taken something that wasn’t meant to be hers.

* * *

And then there’s the conversation she half-overhears, and is quite sure she isn’t meant to have heard at all.

She wakes in the night to find the bed beside her empty, and the bedroom door open and letting in just a crack of golden light from Robbie’s front room. There’s the murmur of voices in the other room. Low enough to sleep through, but not low enough to avoid hearing what they’re saying now she’s awake.

“I’m just not sure I can be what you need,” Robbie is saying quietly. It’s clear he’s choosing his words with care. “I’m not sure I can be _the way_ you need.”

There’s silence, and then James mumbles something very low that sounds like, “But you _are_. Just keep being the way you are. That’s what I need.”

“But what about…you know, _other stuff_?”

“Rumpy pumpy?” James says, very, very dryly.

Someone snorts. “Don’t be cheeky,” Robbie says, and she can hear him grinning. She has the uncomfortable feeling she’s missing some private joke. “Look, you can’t tell me you don’t…I mean, you just had someone, didn’t you.”

Ah. Perhaps that had bothered Robbie more than Jean had noticed.

James sighs. “Don’t worry about it, alright? I’m not.”

There’s silence. Robbie must make a face, or something, because James continues, “Look, Robbie, I wouldn’t say _no_ , but it’s not important. Not to me. Not compared to everything else.”

Everything else. Working together and eating together. Long boozy lunches. Talking about family. Working as a pair on and off the job. Hours and hours of quiet companionship. All the things she and Robbie don’t have and all the things they don’t talk about. It makes her realise how much of him she’s missing. She hadn’t known she wanted it, til now.

Another silence, then James says, very quietly and, she thinks, just a bit resentfully, “I’m trying to make this work.”

 _This_. Meaning Robbie-and-Jean, with James fitting himself around the edges when and how he can? Or is it Robbie-and James, and is Jean trying to squeeze herself into a space too small for anyone to occupy?

She has the uncanny feeling it’s the latter.

* * *

Robbie and James just seem to _fit_ together. She’s noticed it before, the way they finish each others’ sentences, or seem to know what the other is thinking instinctively without words. It’s what makes them such an effective partnership. She saw it years ago, and patted herself on the back for inadvertently creating such an asset for the Thames Valley force.

Now that she’s observing them outside the station as often as inside, she’s seeing all the other ways they fit together too. The way James shortens his stride to compensate for his long legs, and the way they fold into each other on the couch. The way James automatically reaches for the low sodium sauce and the way Robbie has of joking his sergeant out of a grump. The way James’ eyes linger on Robbie’s arms – all corded muscle, surprisingly strong and fluid beneath her fingers – and the way now and then Robbie will look back and she’ll see something new and soft on his face. The way Robbie’s gaze has taken to lingering on James’ long, delicate hands.

Most of all, the way they each seem to know instinctively when to step back and when to press closer. Jean doesn’t know how to do that, has never known how to do that with anyone. She’s always been the one who presses in and in, who doesn’t see that people need space and time until it’s too late and she’s pushed in so close she’s pushed them away. That’s how it was with DI Fields. That’s how it was with Andrew. It’s that pushiness that made her one of the youngest Superintendents in the country, and Oxford’s first female CS. It’s that same pushiness that thrusts her headlong into relationships, that makes her give and give and take and take until they’re both drawn dry.

Well, she’s always known this thing with Robbie wasn’t going to last. If there was a space in Robbie’s life for her, it was only ever as a place-holder, she knows that. It was never permanent. Better to go now, before she pushes one or all of them into a corner from which they can’t escape.

She tries to tell herself it doesn’t bother her. It turns out she’s no better at lying to herself than she is at lying to her son.

* * *

And then it happens. It’s late on a Wednesday night, and they’ve been up for hours talking through this business with what the papers have dubbed the Oxford Strangler. They’re no closer to finding the bloke than they were days ago. Jean finally takes herself off to bed, because one of them has to be good for something in the morning, and she lets the quiet murmur of their voices lull her off to sleep.

When she wakes hours later, the lights are still on. She gets up, goes to the doorway, meaning to tell them both to go to bed already, they won’t be any good to her tomorrow if they don’t get some rest, and she’ll order them to sleep if she has to because she’s still their bloody _boss_ – and stops at the door, staring at the scene before her.

James is pacing in front of the couch, hair standing up every which way with frustration and his whole body crackling with an anxious, fidgety energy. Robbie is standing very still, the central point around which the centrifuge seems to turn, and saying, “You’re driving yourself round the bend. Would you just slow your mind down for one goddamn minute?”

And then he’s reaching out, crushing James to him in a fierce embrace, and their lips are rammed together in something that looks more like a bite than a kiss.

At least it works. He definitely seems to have found a way to bring the boundless force that is James Hathaway to a standstill. They tear apart, stare at each other, then lean in again and this time it’s gentler. So gentle and so tender Jean can’t bear to watch.

She steps away from the door and then slides very quietly back beneath the covers. She lies awake for hours, but Robbie never comes to bed.

* * *

When they finally talk about it, it’s almost by accident. They’re in bed, Robbie’s hand wrapped warm and possessive around her belly, and they’re talking over how this whole mess – this wonderful, ridiculous, heart-breaking affair – even started.

“You remember the first time we…” she trails off and hates herself for it, just a little. She’s a hardened copper, who’s done her time watching hard-core pornography, bringing in pimps, and investigating crimes of passion. There’s not a single perversion that raises so much as a blush when she has to call it by name around the nick. She shouldn’t be embarrassed here in bed with Robbie, not after every intimacy they’ve shared.

Maybe it’s just that if she had to put a name to it, she wouldn’t know what to say. ‘Had sex’ sounds too impersonal, ‘made love’ too soppy, ‘spent the night together’ too like dodging the question. She wonders what Robbie calls it to himself, or if the question of terminology even worries him. Probably not.  

“I remember,” Robbie says, in such a warm, knowing voice that Jean finds herself blushing. She’s grateful for the dark now - it’s one thing to blush when you’re a girl in the first flush of sexual discovery, and quite another to blush as a middle-aged soon-to-be divorcée.

“Yes, yes, quite,” she says quickly, before Robbie can start listing everything he remembers. One of the _very_ great surprises of this ill-advised affair has been discovering that taciturn Robbie Lewis can be extremely vocal in the bedroom. And has _quite_ the imagination. She’d never have picked it.

“Were you free?” she asks very suddenly. She doesn’t know where that’s come from. She hadn’t meant to ask that tonight – perhaps she’d meant to slip out of his life without ever getting a straight answer on what she had or hadn’t interrupted – but now that it’s said she can’t take it back.

The sudden tension that animates Robbie’s body is more remarkable for the contented post-coital lassitude it replaces.

“How d’you mean?” he mumbles.

It’s a fairly self-explanatory question, she thinks irritably. _Am I the other woman?_ , that’s what she’s asking, but she’s damned if she’s going to offer him the words. It’s another of those things it’s easy to talk about on a case, and damn near impossible to investigate in her own life.

But she's failed at this kind of investigation before.  She can do better this time.

“Was there anyone else for you?” she asks quietly. “Or were you, you know, free? To be with me?”

He rolls away from her until only the tips of their feet are still touching. He’s silent for so long that she’s starting to think he’s not going to answer at all when he says, “I thought I was.”

Her heart stops. Because that’s not the same as _yes_ , is it. Actually, that’s the same as _no._

“But maybe I got a few things wrong,” he mumbles.

He doesn’t say anything else.

She wants to press him for answers, to find out what that _means_. But Robbie’s not a suspect, and this isn’t an interrogation, and if any one’s committed a crime here, it’s her.  She feels a flush of familiar angry humiliation.  She's been here before, hasn't she, over twenty-five years ago now but the feeling is as fresh as if it was yesterday.  

“So, uh, who’s cheating on who?” she asks in a very small voice. She almost hopes he doesn’t hear her.

“No one’s cheating,” he says very firmly. “I’m not _him_.”

No, he's not Andrew.  He's not even DI Fields.  But she's still the same Jean who keeps making the same damn mistakes over and over again.  And it was one thing to wonder if in her grief she’d reached out and unknowingly grabbed hold of something to which she had no right. It’s another to feel like she’s still taking, taking every day, from that awkward, irritating, inscrutable sod for whom somewhere along the way she’s developed the most inexplicable fondness. 

She thinks with wry humour that she's not a particularly creative criminal.  She's always after the same forbidden thing.  

So she says to Robbie, “I know you’re not,” and thinks, _but maybe I am_.  Because even if they're not cheating, someone is being cheated here.  Possibly all of them.

He doesn’t hear what she doesn’t say. Lord knows why she’d thought he might.

“Go to sleep, love,” he murmurs. He’s already halfway there himself.

But she doesn’t go to sleep. She lies awake all night thinking about the man beside her and the man in the other room, and finally accepting that there has been one obvious solution to this problem all along.

She can take herself out of it.

* * *

Jean Innocent has committed two crimes in her life. The second was when she was twenty-six years old, and newly transferred to the Belfast station. She hadn’t been there two weeks when it was obvious what had happened. She’d skipped two periods, she was queasy in the mornings, her breasts were tender – all signs pointed to a new life incubating inside her. DI Fields had loved her and left her. Or she’d left him. It amounted to the same thing.

She could have taken leave and flown home, gone to a discreet clinic in the South of England, taken her sister or one of her girlfriends along with her for moral support. But the thought of going home again so soon, after the thundercloud under which she’d left – anger and recriminations and everyone talking until finally there seemed no choice but to apply for a transfer – was unbearable. There were underground clinics operating in and around Belfast, and it wasn’t hard to find out where from the women coming in and out of the station every day. So she took two days sick leave, and had it taken care of.

She doesn’t regret it. She met Andrew three months later, and never looked back. She couldn’t have kept it then. She’d been young and scared and very, very alone. It was the right choice. She made the same choice when she was 49, older but still scared and still alone. She doesn’t regret that either.

But sometimes she wonders what those children might have been like. If they’d have been fair like their fathers, or inherited Jean’s darker colouring. If they’d have been clever, or sporty, or musical. Some days she feels like a criminal. She steals lives like she stole a glass unicorn.

But no one’s ever caught her, and she’s walked away, carrying nothing with her but her regrets.

She can walk away again.


End file.
